Setting a Goal of Reconciliation, Clinton Plans a November Trip to Hanoi

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: September 15, 2000

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14—
The White House said today that President Clinton would visit Vietnam shortly after the November elections, becoming the first president to step onto Vietnamese soil since the end of the war there that took 58,000 American lives. The trip would complete a reconciliation with the Communist government that has unfolded over the past six years.

In what could be the last and one of the most dramatic foreign trips of his presidency, Mr. Clinton will make a state visit to Hanoi, the capital, which has been almost entirely rebuilt since the days when American aircraft conducted bombing runs.

But the trip will also take him through areas burned into the American consciousness more than a generation ago: Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, and some locations in the country's center, where much of the heaviest fighting took place, perhaps including Hue or the port of Da Nang.

Mr. Clinton's plan to visit Vietnam has been widely discussed at the White House for months. But his chief of staff, John D. Podesta, and aides to Vice President Al Gore all said that the visit could not occur until after the election was over.

''It's just too fraught with complex issues,'' one of Mr. Clinton's top advisers said recently, recalling the accusations in the 1992 presidential campaign that Mr. Clinton dodged the draft while at Oxford University in England, thereby avoiding service in Vietnam. ''Gore's people, understandably, did not want reminders of Clinton's past distracting from the messages of the campaign.''

So 25 years after the last American helicopter completed a panicked evacuation from Saigon, Mr. Clinton will spend some of his waning moments as commander in chief in the country that defined the political crises of his youth. He will most likely strike the themes he has when visiting other former American adversaries: talking about using trade as an instrument for democratization, and perhaps declaring that the two countries have found common ground as the imperatives of economic globalization have overshadowed the divisions of the cold war.

Today the White House spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said the real importance of the trip was the arrival of an American president on what was once enemy soil -- even though commerce issues will be on the agenda, as well as the search for the remainsof American soldiers still listed as missing, and studies of the effects of Agent Orange, a defoliant used throughout the war.

''There's just very much symbolic value in the president visiting and going actually to visit the country,'' Mr. Lockhart said. Under the current plan Mr. Clinton will not visit Cambodia, whose suffering began during what its people called ''the American war,'' to differentiate it from so many conflicts that followed.

Congressional reaction reflected the divisions about Vietnam that linger to this day. Senator Robert C. Smith, a New Hampshire Republican and critic of Mr. Clinton, snapped, ''He should have gone 30 years ago.''

But praise came from Republican and Democratic veterans of the war, who provided Mr. Clinton with political cover as he lifted the embargo on the country in 1994, restored relations in 1995 and concluded a broad trade deal two months ago.

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war in the jail that became known as the Hanoi Hilton -- a spot Mr. Clinton will constantly be circling in central Hanoi -- said the president was making the right move. But he added, ''I respectfully declined the president's invitation to join the trip because I was just there in April and see no need to go back so soon.''

Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, called the end of Mr. Clinton's term ''an appropriate time in the history between our two countries for an American president to visit Vietnam.''

And Senator Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat, said: ''The president has been very brave on Vietnam. He's led and done the right thing. God bless him for going.''

Mr. Clinton will append the trip to his last summit meeting with Asian leaders, which this year will take place in the tiny, oil-rich sultanate of Brunei on Nov. 15 and 16. He will stay in Vietnam for ''several days,'' a senior official said today. ''We want to give him a lot of opportunity to visit with the Vietnamese people,'' the official said.

During the Vietnam War, Lyndon B. Johnson visited twice, to see troops stationed at Cam Ranh Bay in October 1966 and December 1967. Richard Nixon met with the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, in Saigon in July 1969.

Vietnamese leaders have asked Mr. Clinton to come for many years, starting when Warren M. Christopher, then secretary of state, arrived in Hanoi in the summer of 1995 to re-establish diplomatic relations.

But the movement gathered steam this summer when, after five years, the two countries concluded a trade agreement. It has yet to be approved by Congress, which will probably vote next year. If it passes, Vietnam will receive ''normal trade status,'' meaning that it can export to the United States under favorable terms.

Veterans' groups are also largely in favor of the trip, though officials of some organizations, including the American Legion, have expressed fears that Mr. Clinton's economic message will drown out his remembrances of the American casualties.

''We are happy that the president is visiting Vietnam,'' said Scott Campbell, a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans of America. ''His highest priority -- regarding our organization -- is bringing closure to P.O.W.-M.I.A. issues.''